Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday November 13, 2012 @05:02PM
from the who-gets-what's-left-of-ATI dept.

Dainsanefh tips this report from Reuters:
"Advanced Micro Devices has hired JPMorgan Chase & Co to explore options, which could include a potential sale, as the chipmaker struggles to find a role in an industry increasingly focused on mobile and away from traditional PCs, according to three sources familiar with the situation. ... Some investors believe part or all of AMD could be bought by a technology company that might want to emulate Apple Inc's tight control of software and components, a strategy credited in part for the success of the iPad and iPhone. Microsoft Corp, Google Inc, Samsung Electronics, Intel Corp and even Facebook Inc have been suggested by Wall Street analysts as potential suitors that could benefit from some of AMD's chip business, including its graphics division, PC processors and server chips. Others say AMD's most valuable asset may be its deep bench of engineers or its patents."Update: 11/14 01:44 GMT by S: In an emailed statement, an AMD representative said the company "is not actively pursuing a sale of the company or significant assets at this time."

Intel would never buy AMD. Face it - right now, Intel is *winning* in the market, pretty much legitimately (not 100%, and they used to cheat like mad, but right now they're winning more-or-less fairly). But they need a competitor to avoid a massive antitrust investigation. They need AMD as an enemy more than they need it as an asset.

Facebook would not, and could not, buy AMD. They may be riding high on the Web 2.0 Bubble, but they're an absolutely terrible match. Facebook's made it a point of using off-the-shelf hardware and open-source solutions. They have very little experience with hardware (besides setting up networks and racks), and gain nothing from producing their own hardware.

Google doesn't need them. They're doing fine running on commodity servers for their web stuff, and trying to produce their own mobile chips would anger their hardware partners for Android. It might give them a slight edge in the long run, but the short-term harm seems to outweigh that.

Microsoft *might* work. They need some special edge in the tablet war they just jumped into, and AMD is a good match with their successful Xbox line. But AMD isn't known to be particularly good at low-power chips. Perhaps they just haven't tried yet, or some older design could be successfully adapted into tablets (a single/dual-core, low-power K8 paired with a good Radeon design might be a good A6 competitor, especially if Microsoft tries to bill itself both as an 'enterprise' tablet *and* a 'gaming' tablet). But really, although it makes sense for Microsoft to buy some hardware company, AMD isn't the best choice. NVidia might make a better one, but I don't think they're looking to sell out right now.

Samsung might buy parts of the company, but they wouldn't want the whole thing. I imagine they would love the graphics section, maybe some of the CPU engineers, but I doubt they want to enter the full-on CPU market.

You know who might make more sense? Cray, or maybe IBM. AMD stuff is popular for supercomputers, both their Opterons and their FireStream/FirePro cards. IBM isn't too likely (they have enough good hardware people already), but Cray or one of their competitors seems at least more plausible than any of the other suggestions.

Another idea is some gaming company. AMD has a somewhat-competitive graphics division, and a compute side that could handle gaming loads well with some tweaks. Sony is really the most likely - they've *never* been good at the hardware side, only lucking into success with the PS1 and PS2 after some clever business decisions. But I also doubt Sony is smart enough to try to do that, especially since buying AMD might hurt their (Intel-focused) laptop business.

Actually they DO innovate AC, you're just not allowed to have any of their innovative designs thanks to the IP minefield that is the USA. Look up the Loongson Dragon chips, here you have a MIPS chip with hardware accelerated X86 which is currently at around 75% native speed. Now imagine what all those ARM devices would be like if you could run any X86 programs on it, thanks to hardware emulation of X86? be pretty sweet huh?

but sadly you can't have it as Intel won't license X86 under FRAND so its only for Asia, they can't sell them in the west. i have a feeling as our minefield gets worse so too will we see more cool things that can't be sold here for fear of being sued out of existence.`